How to play HD videos in low resolution, faster

I have a 1080p video and I want to play it in a medium configured PC running Windows XP. Since the system don't have much resources, the videos sometimes used to stall, or play in a slow motion. Is there any Software / Tool / Method to play high res videos in low res? Quality may be compromised.

Solution 1:

Use vlc player and follow these steps.

H.264 codecs are pretty CPU intensive and VLC can't use multi-cores to decode it yet.

So if your computer is dying when decoding 1080p samples from H264, do the following.

Open the preferences
Tick advanced in the lower right corner
Go to "Input/Codec"
Go to "other codecs" subcategory
Go to "FFmpeg"
Put the "skip-filter for H264" to all
Restart VLC

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=42328

Download vlc from here http://www.videolan.org/

Solution 2:

Are you sure you don't have a GPU? Just because you don't have a video / graphics card doesn't mean you don't have a GPU. Most Mainboards have a integrated GPU. If the option isn't greyed out just try it.

But to the core problem itself:
If you have the time before watching the videos: Resize them to a lower resolution. Tools like MeGUI or Handbrake can be utilized for that matter.

Also I recommend the site videohelp.com for issues like this.